Sellers of various products typically advertise a predetermined price for a product, and customers pay that price for the product. The parent applications of the present application describe a method and apparatus that permits sellers to accept “conditional purchase offers” from buyers, in which a conditional purchase offer specifies a price the buyer is willing to pay for the product. Each conditional purchase offer is further associated with a payment identifier that specifies a financial account to “guarantee” the offer. If a seller accepts the offer, then that seller can be paid using the payment identifier. Even if the buyer later reneges, the payment identifier guarantees that the seller receives appropriate compensation, typically either the full offer price or a predetermined penalty payment.
The inventions disclosed in the parent applications are especially advantageous in selling excess, perishable inventory such as seats on airline flights. For example, the marginal cost to an airline of selling an additional seat is extremely low. Accordingly, it can be profitable to sell a seat for a low, buyer-specified offer price, especially if the chance of otherwise selling the seat is small (e.g. soon before the flight departs).
However, for various reasons, sellers may believe, correctly or incorrectly, that the drawbacks of such a system as outweighing the advantages. For example, a seller may believe that such a system forces undue competition among sellers for customers that submit offers. For example, if the seller does not accept a reasonable offer, another seller probably will. In fact, the seller may feel compelled to accept unusually low offer prices out of fear that another seller may gain the repeat business of the customer. Although some sellers may have, in fact, incorrectly assessed the magnitude of such drawbacks, the perception alone can prevent the sellers from participating in such a system.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for processing conditional purchase offers in a manner that reduced the concerns of sellers.